How aaronprimal started their other graphic design journey

Summary

We need an eye-catching book cover design that will be featured on the cover of an upcoming book, on our website and in banner ads.

NOTE: The #1 objective of this cover is to SELL the book off our online shelves! Attract attention, stop them in their tracks as they browse our site or see our banner ads, grab their attention, and make them think "I MUST HAVE this book!"

Company name

The Primal Blueprint

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

The "Primal Blueprint" is a health and wellness philosophy and methodology that uses our evolutionary (genetic) heritage as a blueprint for leading a healthy lifestyle.

A summary of the Primal Blueprint can be found here.

Potential Buyers of the book - People interested in health, fitness, nutrition, losing weight, building muscle, getting in shape, evolution and how it relates to health and wellness etc.

Front Cover:

We want this copy to be included on the front cover in this order from top to bottom:

Forget everything you thought you knew about diet, exercise and health!

"Mark Sisson" and "The Primal Blueprint" should be in serif font. All other text should be in sans-serif font.

We want the book cover to emulate other popular health and fitness book cover designs. Here are our favorites:

The Zone Diet - Not the color scheme, but the fact that it gets so many hot button selling points listed.

The Abs Diet - For it's simplicity and boldness.

You the Owner's Manual - For its "definitive guide" style. We like the modern serif font used.

The Paleo Diet - For the multiple sales copy sections and for all the reasons we like the three above.

Back Cover:

We want this copy included on the back cover:

Champion athlete, nutrition expert and “MarksDailyApple.com” healthy lifestyle web guru Mark Sisson is pleased to introduce you to Grok, a hunter-gatherer from 10,000 B.C. His simple lifestyle triggers optimal gene expression to create the ultimate lean, strong, energetic, smart, and disease-free role model for human peak performance. Grok’s genetic makeup is identical to ours today - yet so many of us are just getting fatter, sicker and more depressed in this modern age of medicine, technology and plentiful food. The answer - and the cure - lies in a unique understanding of evolutionary biology and modern genomics.

Sisson, a longtime coach/trainer to Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes and ordinary folks, sorts through the hype and destroys today's harmful and manipulative conventional wisdom. In its place, he presents an easily understood explanation of why we get sick, fat and old before our time. The Primal Blueprint is not a regimented “diet” nor a 12-week “get fit fast!” contest protocol, but a simple, lifelong roadmap for success that consists of ten natural laws based on common sense and proven by the two-million-year scientific “study” that is human evolution.

There should also be a small testimonial section. Here is one such testimonial. We may include a couple more so please leave room, or use this same quote a few times as a placeholder.

“Mark’s unique approach to health and fitness has enabled me to overcome years of frustrating setbacks with strict diets and boring exercise regimens that just made me tired and hungry. The Primal Blueprint rocks!”

Michelle Pfeiffer, International film star and Mark’s neighbor, client and friend

We will also be including a photo of Mark on the back cover. Use this photo as a placeholder.

The Spine:

The spine should simply say "The Primal Blueprint" and "Mark Sisson" and include a cropped mini thumbnail of Mark's face. Use the photo image linked to above.

Notes:

1. I will check back frequently to give lots of feedback and guidance.

2. We assure you that we will be choosing a contest winner.

3. The copyright for the winning book cover design will be wholly owned and all rights reserved by the company sponsoring this contest.

Wants

- Book Dimensions: 6" x 9" trade hard cover, spine width 1 1/4"
- We are leaning away from having any images or icons included in the design. In fact we have held a contest for this before, and though we liked some of the designs, in this contest we want the cover to be copy/text intensive with less (if any) focus on icons. If you find that there is some subtle way to include some imagery (a light design touch here or there) we are open to a DNA double helix, cave art and/or a blueprint design. Again, no images are required, but if done right could work to enhance the cover as opposed to overwhelm it or be the main focus.
- We imagine black, white and blue, and/or earth tones (tan, ochre, green etc.) to be the featured colors, but are open to any creative interpretations.
- Clean, bold design.
- Easily scalable. All art needs to be in vector format like that produced by Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. We need to be able to edit all layers.
- In addition to the original Photoshop or Illustrator files we also need a digital e-book representation of the design as seen here (note: not an accompanying ad, just the standing ebook image).

Don't want

- We don't want the book cover to be similar to logos/design found on our websites (Primal Nutrition, Mark's Daily Apple), or to our last book cover design.